Missing Keyword Data to Return to Webmaster Tools

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Google-Webmaster-Tools-LogoLast week SEO and online marketing professionals all had a collective freakout as keyword data stopped showing up in Webmaster Tools. They even made memes! Well there is good news, Google has said the issue was an unintended bug, and should be fixed soon.

Google made a very public switch to secure search last week, in an effort to encrypt all search information and provide “extra protection” to searchers. Webmasters immediately noticed nearly all of their keyword referral data disappeared and was replaced with “(not provided)”. The best way to deal with the issue was to access similar keyword data under Search Queries within the Search Traffic section of Google Webmaster Tools.

But there was a problem, when secure search was implemented that keyword data stopped being reported or provided within Webmaster Tools. Many questioned whether this was a mistake or a change in policy, while the regular anti-Google group proclaimed Google had lied and was intentionally hiding the data; Matt Cutts had previously estimated only one to two percent of keyword data would be affected by secure search.

Now, John Mueller, a member of the Google Webmaster Tools team in Europe, as well as a separate Google spokesperson have both clarified the missing data was the result of the bug, and they are working hard to solve the problem.

Mueller posted to the Google Webmaster Central forum, “The team is aware of the problem and working on speeding that data back up again. Thanks for your patience in the meantime.” The spokesperson told Search Engine Watch, “We’ve recently fixed a small bug related to data reporting in Webmaster Tools. We expect reporting to return to normal in the coming days.”

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Google AdWords Ready Image Ads Helps Easily Create Display Ads

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Ready Image Ads Screenshot

Google made some changes to how you can design display ads to help ease the challenges advertisers and SEM agencies have been complaining about for what seems like forever. Today they rolled-out Ready Image Ads within AdWords, which aims to make it easier to create ads for multiple sizes that look good across all devices. The tool is currently Google’s best attempt to solve this issue and they hope to get more AdWords advertisers to run display campaigns, according to Ginny Marvin.

The tool works by simply entering a URL from your website. From there, the Ready Image Ads tool automatically pulls images from your site to create various ads in various IAB standard sizes. These ads are also HTML5, making them compatible for viewing on mobile and desktop devices alike.

Ready Ads can also be used to create dynamic ads, engagement ads (including hover-to-play and lightbox ads), video ads, and general purpose ads from a variety of templates. View Google’s introduction video for Ready Ads below:

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High Quality Content Isn’t Always The Most Useful Content

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What’s the best way to rank highly right now, according to Google? Most SEO professionals would say some one of two things. Creating a quality site will get your site ranked highly, and quality content is the most powerful way to improve the quality and value of your site.

According to Ryan Moulton, a software engineer at Google who Barry Schwartz from SEO Roundtable implies works in the search area, high quality content doesn’t necessarily work like that.

The assumption is that the “high quality” content Google favors is the most accurate and informative text available. But, Moulton says we misunderstand or forget about actual usefulness.

He was defending Google in a Hacker News thread on why Google ranks some sites highly despite the content not being entirely accurate, and in some people’s eyes low quality. He explains that some sources may be the most accurate, but they are often way too high-minded for the average searcher.

He states, “there’s a balance between popularity and quality that we try to be very careful with. Ranking isn’t entirely one or the other. It doesn’t help to give people a better page if they aren’t going to click on it anyways.”

Ryan then continues with an example:

Suppose you search for something like [pinched nerve ibuprofen]. The top two results currently are mayoclinic.com and answers.yahoo.com.

Almost anyone would agree that the mayoclinic result is higher quality. It’s written by professional physicians at a world renowned institution. However, getting the answer to your question requires reading a lot of text. You have to be comfortable with words like “Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs,” which a lot of people aren’t. Half of people aren’t literate enough to read their prescription drug labels: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1831578/

The answer on yahoo answers is provided by “auntcookie84.” I have no idea who she is, whether she’s qualified to provide this information, or whether the information is correct. However, I have no trouble whatsoever reading what she wrote, regardless of how literate I am.

Google has to balance many factors in their search results, and the simple fact is most searchers aren’t looking for comprehensive scientific explanations for most of their problems. They want the most relevant information for their problem in terms they can understand.

It should be noted Google does allow access to these academic sources in other areas of their search, but when writing for the main search page, your content needs to be accessible to your audience. Your average SEO news source can get away with using technical language to an extent, because those reading your information likely already have built a vocabulary for the topic.

However, if you are offering a service or attempting to educate to the general public about your field, you need to use terms they can easily understand without a dictionary and address their needs head-on.

There is still certainly a place for more extensive content. For instance, the Mayo Clinic and WebMD still rank higher than Yahoo Answers for most medical searches, simply because they are more reliable.

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Getting to Know Google Webmaster Tools

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Google Webmaster Tools is one of the best tools at your disposal for making sure people are able to find your site, but a surprising amount of people run websites and never open it. Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Webspam team calls not using the free Google webmaster resources one of the five most common mistakes a site owner can make, so it makes sense to share some information about the tool.

For those that don’t know, Google Webmaster Tools is free software that helps you manage the more technical aspects of your website. It is especially loved by SEO professionals because it offers various diagnostic reports on numerous areas of your page from the best possible source. You can find out why you aren’t ranking or review your link profile, but Webmaster Tools also provides a direct hotline between Google and website owners. If you have been hit with a penalty, you are notified in Webmaster Tools.

Google Webmaster Tools is often confused with Google Analytics, which is a sort of companion software to Webmaster Tools. However, Analytics is aimed at marketers and provides data more relevant for that area. Both provide extensive resources and options for optimization, but for SEO you will be much more interested in Webmaster Tools.

You will have to be logged into your Google account which you use for Gmail or Google+, which you should undoubtedly have if you are running a website. Once you’ve logged into Google, you can go to http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools and begin the process of setting up your account. Bruce Clay offers an extensive tutorial with four different options for verifying you are a site owner and setting up your account.

Once you’ve verified, you are set to explore the options and resources available. It may take some playing around to get the hang of, but you’ll be amazed at what you can accomplish within the software. There are also numerous guides available to help you understand what can be done with Webmaster Tools.

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Google Officially Rolls Out Their New Logo and App Launcher

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Google LogoYesterday you may have noticed a couple changes when you opened up Google. The first is the most obvious – it was accompanied by a little help box explaining the change – but Google has officially implemented their new app launcher in the main Google navigation bar for quick and easy access to other Google products.

You’ll be familiar with this app launcher if you use Android devices or Chromebook computers. Search Engine Land also reports that the grid-style launcher has been in testing since February or earlier.

Google App Launcher

The other change is a lot more subtle, but still of note for the design community. Google has flattened their logo, keeping up with the hot trend. Flat design is especially popular at the moment as Apple’s new flat iOS also rolled out earlier this week. The colors in the Google logo are also slightly different, but you won’t be too thrown off by the tweaks.

Many will have already seen the updates, but if you’re Google page still looks the same as it always has, be patient. Google says it should be completely rolled out over the next couple months on most Google products.

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Recent Study Says +1’s Aren’t Driving Up Rankings

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Google +1If you ask some marketing professionals, they may acts as if it is common knowledge that Google +1’s help raise your rankings on the search engine results. However, that “knowledge” is more an assumption based on a few correlation studies such as those done by Searchmetrics and Moz. These studies found extremely high correlation between Google +1’s and high rankings, but as you should know, correlation does not equal causation.

In fact, Google’s most prominent mouthpiece and Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts has openly debunked the theory that more +1’s lead to higher rankings. But, that only sparked more debate. Whether or not there is a causative link between these two is much more fuzzy than many might tell you.

In an attempt to get to the bottom of this question, Stone Temple Consulting decided to conduct a real study of the effect Google +1’s have on search rankings. The difference is this study would be a real examination of causation, not correlation. The result: “Google Plus Shares did not drive any material ranking changes that we could detect.”

Eric Enge, leader of the study, did admit there were some possible limitations to the study. One of the biggest issues is the potential amount of links not showing up in the monitoring tools used in the study. In Enge’s estimate, the cumulative links found by Open Site Explorer, Majestic SEO, and Ahrefs is at best 50 percent of the total links to a site. It could even be as low as 30 percent of the links.

There was also a fair chance that general ranking movement and algorithm adjustments that are always occurring might not have been noticed in the study. In general, all studies of this sort are also very vulnerable to Google’s general complexity. There are so many factors involved which are not fully disclosed that any number of things could not have been taken into account.

Enge admits to these issues early, but he still stands by his study and the findings. He published a full review and report of the study and its methodology on Stone Temple Consulting’s website earlier this week. You can find all of the dirty details there, but the simplest conclusion is that Google shares are not driving up rankings. There will of course be many who still don’t believe this, and the debate will go on, but this tilts the scales away from what was considered conventional wisdom by many.

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What Are You Supposed To Do If You Think You’ve Been Hit By Panda?

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Google recently integrated their Panda algorithms into their normal indexing process, and this has sprung up a whole new batch of questions from webmasters. The most common question is specifically how site owners will know if their site has been hit by Panda. Really, it was only a matter of time before Matt Cutts, the noted Google engineer and head of Webspam, addressed the issue.

And that is what he did earlier this week, when Cutts used one of his Webmaster Help videos to respond to Nandita B.’s question, “how will a webmaster come to know whether her site is hit by Panda? And, if her site is already hit, how she will know that she has recovered from Panda?”

Now that the Panda algorithm is a part of the normal search indexing process, finding out if you’ve been affected by Panda won’t be near as easy. You can’t just compare your analytics reports with recorded dates for Panda rollouts. But, Cutts does have some suggestions if you think your site has been affected.

Cutts said, “basically, we’re looking for high quality content. So if you think you might be affected by Panda, the overriding goal is to make sure that you’ve got high quality content.”

Of course, high quality content in this context means sites that offer real value to users. It appears integrating Panda was actually one of the last steps in a shift towards a high focus on high quality content. They’ve been suggesting focusing on value for a long time, and now it is officially a large part of the normal search algorithm.

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Google Tests Out New Style For Mobile AdWords Ads

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Google AdWords New Style Test

 

Over the next few days you might notice some changes to the way Google displays their mobile AdWords ads. Search Engine Land reports Google is currently testing out a new look which simultaneously makes the entire result page look more cohesive while keeping ads clearly labeled.

The first change you will likely notice is the way Google is using color. Google have been using lightly colored backgrounds to signify ads, but with this test they may be moving towards placing both ads and organic listings in white boxes in front of a gray background. Similarly, the gray background that has been behind the Google logo and search box is gone.

Instead of identifying ads with colored background, there is a new eye-catching yellow ad icon directly next to the display URL. The icon is significantly more attention grabbing than the old small “ad” that was previously to the right of the headline.

You can see the new style being tested above, while the current version is below.

Google AdWords Test Style Old

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Google Employees Explain AdWords Violations [Video]

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AdWords violations can throw a massive wrench into your advertising plans and completely derail a campaign. Any good marketer tries to avoid making the mistakes that can get your text ads disapproved or suspended, but many will still encounter the fearsome email from the AdWords team warning you about violations.

In an effort to further explain exactly how Google decides who to punish and how these violation systems work, three Google employees posted a video hangout to the Google Adwords Help Forums, as Search Engine Roundtable reported.

The 10 minute video was posted by Google’s Courtney Pannell, with the majority of the presentation coming from Ly and Joshua. They discuss the most important AdWords violation topics including:

  • How Sites are Reviewed by Google
  • Why Sites Are Disabled
  • How to resubmit Sites

If you encounter a warning from Google about AdWords violations, you will definitely want to watch this video.

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What is Google Doing About Low-Value Auto-Generated Content Sites?

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Have you ever searched for a term only to find a page that says “we have no articles for [your search term]” and a whole bunch of ads? Most people have come across these sites with auto-generated content, often called “Made for AdSense” or MFA sites. These pages are created for the sole reason of luring people in, and hoping they click an AdSense ad to leave the page instead of hitting the back button.

The majority of these types of websites use a script to automatically generate content that takes snippets from search results or web pages with those keywords. They don’t offer real content in any way and have absolutely no legitimate value. It makes many wonder why they’ve encountered these kinds of pages in the Google search results.

One user directly asked Matt Cutts, Google’s head of webspam, if the search engine is doing anything about the pages, such as penalties or removing these sites from the index. As you would expect, Google already has a policy in place, and Cutts encourages users to report any pages like this they come across. He states:

We are absolutely willing to take action against those sites. We have our rules in our guidelines about auto-generated pages that have very little value and I have put out in the past specific calls for sites where you search for a product – a VCR, a laptop, or whatever – and you think you’re going to get a review, and the first thing you see is ‘0 Reviews found for [blah blah blah].’

As Google sees it, even if these pages are from legitimate search engines, they don’t belong in the rankings. Users don’t really like searching for something and being sent to another page of search results. They want to be directed straight to real content.

There are very few times when search results snippets should be indexed. The only real time it might be considerable is if you have exclusive data that no one else has. But, there is no time when a supposed search results page with 0 results should ever be indexed.

To put it simply, Google is already trying to fight against these sites. They aim to find and penalize all they can, but they also want people to report them with a spam report if possible so that the lowest amount possible slip through the cracks.

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